


The Abandoned

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Abandonment, Carthak, F/M, Intercultural Couple, Isolation, Love, Marital Issues, Politics, Reconciliation, Regret, Resentment, elopement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 04:23:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15525975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Sarai feels abandoned in Carthak and in her marriage; Zaimid tries to assure her that she is not.





	The Abandoned

The Abandoned

“I wasn’t expecting you to wait up for me.” Zaimid, who had anticipating stumbling into dark quarters where he would prepare while striving not to disturb his slumbering wife, was surprised when he entered their chambers to find her perched on a divan, reading a book by candlelight. “You certainly could have gone to bed.” 

“So that you wouldn’t have to see me even when you finally come home to me well after midnight?” Sarai responded to his solicitation with what Zaimid regarded as unwarranted sharpness, glaring at him over the top of her tome. 

“Of course not. My concern, which was apparently misguided, was for your rest.” Zaimid took a deep breath to soothe his irritation and to prevent himself from answering Sarai’s temper with a flash of his own. Trying to slow his pulse along with his breathing, he fought to remain the calm, rational man he had been before Sarai had swept into his life like a storm, smashing his reason and firing a passion that burned so hot within him that he had eloped–something he would have once derided the hero of a romance for doing. “I apologize if you feel we haven’t been spending enough time together, my dear. I will endeavor to grade more essays for my students and review more of the cases that puzzle my healers at home rather than at the university or in the healers’ ward.” 

“That’s not a solution, Zaimid.” Sarai shook her head, black curls bouncing in fervor as she slammed her book shut and set it on a cypress table with a decisive slap. “You’ll just continue to overwork yourself beyond the point of exhaustion and neglect me even when you’re at home. In no way is that an improvement on our present situation.”

“I’ll decide for myself what constitutes being overworked, thank you very much, my lady.” Zaimid managed to keep his tone level even as his nostrils flared in aggravation at her petty petulance. After a long day and night of teaching and healing, he craved her support far more than her challenge. Perhaps he was overworked, but that definitely wasn’t for her to decide. He was the expert healer, after all. “As for your charge of neglect, I would submit to you that you knew of my duties as chief healer and head of healing at the university and what demands they placed upon me when you agreed to marry me. You can’t complain of what my responsibilities require of me now when you wed me fully aware of how onerous they would be for both of us.” 

“When I married you, I thought you might put some priority on doing your duty by me as your wife.” Sarai’s full lips thinned to a knife’s blade that cut him to the core of his identity as her husband. “Instead your duties as chief healer and head of healing at the university seem all that matter to you.” 

“You matter to me so much I eloped with you, Sarai. It hurts me that you doubt my love for you.” His voice cracked, and he hoped she could hear his heart breaking along with it. 

“It hurts me that you’ve given me cause to doubt your love.” Sarai’s eyes glittered with unshed tears until she blinked them away with a harsh, defiant swiftness. “I need your support even more now than I ever did in the Copper Isles–even when I was mad with fear that I would be wed to a child king in a sham of a marriage–because I’m utterly alone here.” 

“You aren’t alone here.” Zaimid sank onto the divan beside her and reached out to squeeze her hand but she jerked it away before their fingertips could so much as touch. “The empress herself often rides with you and names you as one of her closest friends.” 

“The empress, however welcoming, gracious, and powerful, is still only one women, Zaimid.” Sarai’s sigh was sorrowful as a dying wind. “The rest of the women at court–including the wives of your healers and fellow scholars–sneer at me as a harlot because I had the gumption to flee with you never mind that I was a maid when we married.” 

“Those gossiping hens should consider it none of their business whether you were a maid when we wed.” Zaimid again attempted to clasp Sarai’s hand, and this time she consented, her fingers quivering beneath his as she cast about her for comfort. “They are spiteful, and the less they’re in your life, the happier your life will be. Don’t let their sourness impact your joyful nature.” 

“I know you’re right”–Sarai fumbled for words to express the depths of her misery and isolation–“it’s just I feel so lonely and purposeless here in Carthak. It’s the same as when I was in the Copper Isles when nobody confided their plans of revolution to me so I believed nothing would ever change there because I was the only one who seemed to be committed to fighting–however imperfectly--the injustices and abuses the raka faced.” 

Sarai’s comment contained an ocean of bitterness and abandonment that threatened to drown Zaimid. Not for the first time, he wondered if his wife would prefer to be installed in the Copper Isles as queen–to sit in the throne that could have been hers instead of her sister’s if she hadn’t fled with him–than to be in Carthak, a land that had once seemed to her a perfect safe haven but now demonstrated to her all the flaws that offset its splendor, all the traits that made it a troubled empire. 

“Do you regret running away with me?” Zaimid forced himself to ask the question that had been haunting him ever since he sailed away from the Copper Isles with Sarai. She might have begged him to rescue her from an arranged marriage to a child king well on his way to growing into a tyrant ruling over a country where the native raka seemed doomed to eternal oppression, but he had feared even then that she would come to resent him for taking her away from her homeland. He had been terrified that in his eagerness to become her savior, he would ruin her, but when he had prayed to the Graveyard Hag, imploring assurances that his flight with Sarai would end happily, the Graveyard Hag had told him that she could guarantee him the time he needed to escape with Sarai but couldn’t promise any good fortune beyond that. From there, she said, he and Sarai would have to roll the dice and hope that chance favored them, though, she had added with a wink, many people found such a thrill in gambling that they would pay anything to roll the dice one more time no matter how much they had lost in the last game of chance. That hadn’t been much consolation to Zaimid–never an impulsive man–but he had thrown caution to the winds for once and thrown the dice, eloping with Sarai. Now the dice were cast, and Sarai would tell him if he had rolled snake eyes with her.

“No,” Sarai whispered against his cheek as she kissed him. “I made the best decision that I could with the knowledge I had available to me at the time, and I love you and Carthak even if I get lonely sometimes.” 

“You could’ve been queen if you’d stayed in the Copper Isles, though.” Zaimid murmured a thought that he was certain must enter her mind even more than it did his, a might-have-been that was at once tantalizing and terrible. 

“Perhaps, or maybe I would have been killed in the revolution or married off to a child king in a joke wedding. There’s no guarantee that the rest of history would flow the same if I hadn’t left the Copper Isles, and no way of knowing that I would’ve ended up in my sister’s place had I stayed.” Sarai brushed away a forehead that stuck to her forehead that glistened with sweat in the candlelight. “Anyway, being queen isn’t necessarily a blessing. I see the strain ruling puts on the empress every day. If I were queen, I’d likely be lonelier than I am now.”

“Kaddar tells me you’re a great help to the empress.” Zaimid stroked Sarai’s hair, remembering Sarai’s words about lacking a purpose in Carthak. “She relies on you to support her charities and promote her reforms. Without you, Carthak would be a different place, a lesser one, my love.” 

“Thank you.” Sarai’s lips brushed across his lips. “That’s all I ever need to hear from you to make coming here worth it.”


End file.
